While Office 12, Microsoft's next-generation desktop suite, is not expected to hit Beta 1 until later this fall, Microsoft officials are set to show off a number of its components at the company's annual Professional Developers Conference in mid-September. Recent developer conferences have focused almost exclusively on operating system and tools futures. But this year's will include dozens of tracks aimed at Office developers and users.

Actually, the so-called XML-based file format of Office 2003 are not the same as the ones that will be implemented in MS Office 12. They have nothing to do within each other, so you're locked into a situation where MS uses one different technology / file wrapping method per office release....

Even if the new XML office formats were fully compatible between MS-Office releaces, it seams that they leave out MS-Offic 97 usrs. This version is still frequently used in many companies, and I expect it to remain that way for several years to come. If the Office 97 users havent found a business case for upgrading by now, they are not likely to upgrade to MS-Office 12 either.

To some extent, Microsoft faces the same problem getting new products out onto the market as OpeoOffice.org. The software allready in use fully fill the needs of the users.

Sure, you could add new and useful inventions but at some point the cost of licence upgrade, installation, integration with other software, testing and training is so high that it outweigh the benefits of the new invention.

The broke IT bubble of year 2000, have made management much more aware of this kind of issues, ubgrades are no longer something you do out of the belief in new technology but something you need hard business facts to support.

I didn't say that both formats were the same. I said that the new XML formats would have similar, if not the same, licensing terms as the current formats, which are royalty-free. There is no lock-in. The current XML formats do not require MS Office to view or edit. Many businesses use third-party tools or custom solutions to create/manipulate the current XML formats without MS Office.The main differences between the current XML formats and the ones in Office 12 are that:
XML will be the default format in Office 12
The new formats will save individual document elements (dlls, images, page/item relationships, etc.) as individual files within a zip container rather than embedded in the XML document, making it easier to programatically manipulate various items.

To n4cer: you are right about this. In fact, the Office 12 file formats are utterly copied from Open Document, the new OASIS filr format. But the license applying to the XML schemas is the same one that applies to today's MS Office XML schemas, and it's definitely not an open one...